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Here's what I know:

(1) Getting a million dollar equpiment grant is not too hard if your experiment is half decent. For example look at the National Science Foundation (NSF) awards for this week alone.

(2) There was little interest for renting "locker" space in the ISS.

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

It's a Bat, Man!

I was more impressed with Telemedicine Link With South Pole Allows Remote Knee Surgery.

Also, slightly OT, but a new ground-based gamma ray telescope has just been put into action. Interesting, because it detects the rays indirectly by observing the Cherenkov radiation.

To learn more about this work and to develop the background that would satisfy your curiosity, I suggest taking the time to do some research, e.g. by checking out the websites for the principles involved in this project. There's also some excellent cosmological primers available on the web that go over some of this stuff; see e.g. Ned Wright's cosmology tutorial (here and especially here) as well as Wayne Hu's Introduction to the Cosmic Microwave Background.

To go through your concerns one by one:

1. The U.S., in concert with other nations, already maintains an extensive set of scientific facilities in Antarctica, in the form of permanent bases at the South Pole and at McMurdo Sound and Palmer Station. These facilities are manned and operated year-round. Their purpose is to provide logistical support for the scores of short- and long-term scientific projects that take place in Antarctica, such as the one described in this article. In other words, the issue of logistical support for such a project in Antarctica really isn't an issue; an entire organizational/logistical apparatus has been running for many years to provide this capability for science as a whole, and they'll only be one of many projects each year that will take advantage of it.

2. There is already a significant amount of observational evidence for the presence of what's referred to here as "dark energy." One hint of the presence of such an energy component to the Universe comes from trying to reconcile two observations: the first is that cosmic microwave background data indicates that the large-scale geometry of space is flat; the second is that the matter density of the universe (both in baryons, or normal matter, and in unknown dark matter, not to be confused with "dark energy"), measured via a broad variety of techniques, can only provide about 20% of the mass-energy density required to make the large-scale geometry be as flat as is observed. What's the other 80%? If it can't be matter of some sort, then what is it? When this is combined with recent observations that the expansion of the universe is accelerating -- something only possible if such a "dark energy" component to the mass-energy density of the universe is present -- one is forced to take this possibility seriously. (there's a lot more to be said about this issue, but only if someone cares)

3. The telescope will not solely look at one spot on the sky.

4. Lighting is not really an issue; this is not a visible light telescope, but rather a microwave telescope. There are significant noise issues that will have to be confronted in the data analysis, but not really from day vs. night problems.

what crazy assed lunatic is going to give this other crazy assed lunatic 20M to give shit away for free ?

Perhaps someone like the National Science Foundation, or some other group who has as its job giving away money to people who wish to do things which are non-profitable but further Science?

I decided to look up the actual survey because I found myself rethinking holding too firm of an opinion with out the actual questions. So, here is the page that links to the actual questionaire. They have it in PDF and word formats. Here are some of the questions referenced:

Question: H16
Some of the unidentified flying objects that have been reported are really space vehicles from other civilizations.
Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree?
1>strongly agree
2>agree
3>disagree
4>strongly disagree

Question: H17
Some people possess psychic powers or ESP.
Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree?
1>strongly agree
2>agree
3>disagree
4>strongly disagree

Question: H18
There are some good ways of treating sickness that medical science does not recognize.
Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree?
1>strongly agree
2>agree
3>disagree
4>strongly disagree

There is no "don't know" or "no opinion" option for any of these questions, so some people err on the side of probably by agreeing with something that they might not particularly agree with.

Further down:

Now, a new subject. Do you ever read a horoscope or your personal astrology report?
1> yes
2> no

Question: P2 Ask if P1 = 1
Do you read an astrology report every day, quite often, just occasionally, or almost never?
1> every day
2> quite often
3> just occasionally
4> almost never

Question: P3
Would you say that astrology is very scientific, sort of scientific, or not at all scientific?
1> very scientific
2> sort of scientific
3> not at all scientific

Question: P4
Have you heard of magnetic therapy, or the use of magnets to cure pain and illness?
1>yes
2>no

Question: P5 Ask if P4 = 1
Based on what you?ve read or heard, would you say that magnetic therapy is very scientific, sort of scientific, or not at all scientific?
1>very scientific
2>sort of scientific
3>not at all scientific

I wonder how much of that money goes into, say, the study of depression and its effects, the effects of physical, emotional and mental abuse of children and adults, or the effects indifferent educational systems on children, adults, and our society. Not today. The study of Pluto and inter-galactic planets that will never be physically visited by mortal men are, apparently, vastly more important for our federal dollars, than, say, a way to generate energy without pollution. The only way this stuff is gonna benefit you is if you rename that usually-shaded part of yourself Uranus.

So go vote yourself silly. See if that helps. I imagine that the only way to change the system is to get inside it and fix it a piece of it, yourself. Just Undo it.

BuddhaLite.

ps. Have fun.

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

"Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds."

Despite decades of social change, the general perception remains that technical workers, scientists, and engineers are unusually intelligent white men who are socially inept, absent-minded nerds.

Yeah, those are good reasons not to.

But given that one of the major potential resources of the Antarctic is oil, and given that the major consumer of oil and the home base of many oil companies is a country with little respect for treaties and a generally self-serving interpretation of "the interest of all mankind", it might be only a matter of time.

Just for consitency the AC yanked the activity from this site - Which is the second link in the article

Credit where credit is due.

I think the US would stack up well against most other countries -- certainly the people who come to the US are an elite among their own countries, and are not representative, so you won't know by talking to people here. For all the flaws and compromises of our education system, the idea of a liberal arts education -- in high school as well as college -- has a greater following here than most other places. Lots of reformers (particularly among conservatives/capitalists) are essentially proposing a more vocationally-focused educational system, more like in other countries. The vocationally trained really don't need to know science -- an understanding of molecules is useful in very few professions.

I heard a test of basic scientific literacy about five years ago showed that literacy among Americans was about twice the percentage of Europeans, and three times Japanese. It was about basic things like what a molecule is, what DNA is, etc. I was quite surprised. (No country did that well -- I think the US was like 20%). Sadly I cannot find a reference -- make of this what you will. However, I would generally be suspicious of international comparisons based on formalized testing, and comparisons done in school -- the real judge of an education system is not what students know, but what adults who have finished schooling know. This reference was the best I could find -- A comparison of interest in science:

In the United States, Europe, and Canada, approximately 1 in 10 adults can be classified as attentive to science and technology policy; the proportion is smaller--about 7 percent--in Japan. The percentage classified as the "interested" public (for science and technology policy) is higher in the United States than it is in the other three sociopolitical systems. In 1995, it was 47 percent, compared with 33 percent in Europe (for 1992), 40 percent in Canada (1989), and 12 percent in Japan (1991). For all countries, there is a positive relationship between level of education and level of attentiveness (Miller, Pardo, and Niwa 1997).

Haven't seen them posted with all the Flaming going on, so I called up a summary then from their spreadsheet (this is the all adults row from the detailed spreasheet at http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/srs/seind02/append/c7/at07- 10.xls)

True or False
------------

A = The center of the Earth is very hot - 80% Correct

B = All radioactivity is man-made - 76% Correct

C = The oxygen we breathe comes from plants - 87% Correct

D = It is the father's gene which decides whether the baby is a boy or a girl - 65% Correct

E = Lasers work by focusing sound waves - 45% Correct

F = Electrons are smaller than atoms - 48% Correct

G = Antibiotics kill viruses as well as bacteria - 51% Correct

H = The universe began with a huge explosion - 33% Correct

I = The continents on which we live have been moving their location for millions of years and will continue to move in the future - 79% Correct

J = Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals - 53% Correct

K = Cigarette smoking causes lung cancer - 94% Correct

L = The earliest humans lived at the same time as the dinosaurs - 48% Correct

M = Radioactive milk can be made safe by boiling it - 65% Correct

Short Answer
-------------

N = Which travels faster: light or sound? 76% Correct

O = Does the Earth go around the Sun, or does the Sun go around the Earth? - 75% Correct

P = How long does it take for the Earth to go around the Sun: one day, one month, or one year? - 54% Correct

Q = Please tell me in your own words, what is DNA? - 45% Correct

R = Please tell me in your own words, what is a molecule? - 22% Correct

Take a look at the second page.

Who really believes that our Commander in Thief understands enough science to find the basic scientific illiteracy of the voting public worrisome?

Fire ant bites sting like fire because the "unbeatables" (S. invicta) spit acid into the bite, and then the bite always develops into a pustule because the ant also spits bacteria, and they take months to go away. How to prevent this (other than not going outside at all in Texas):
When you get ant-bit, immediately rub bleach on the spot. Straight bleach, Clorox or the like. Reason: neutralizes the acid, kills the bacteria. Or so I have been told. Disclaimer: I am no kind of medical professional at all. Also, those bites can kill you if you have an allergic reaction beyond the normal. More than you want to know, with pictures you don't want to see, cached at Google.

It is, however worth noting that according to the scholarship program website, the proposal deadline for this scholarship was December 19, 2001. Way to fuck with me on 01Apr, Slashfags.

The program only accepts U.S. born applicants; more information on the Iowa State fellowships is available as is information on the program as a whole. Most of the core training at Iowa State is in Computer Engineering classes: CprE530(protocols), CprE531(security), CprE532(warfare/hacking), CprE533(crypto) and CprE534(ethics). If you take a look at the ISU fellowship specs, I think you'll agree that this is a decent way of paying for school and serving your country at the same time. I agree with the previous post that this is basically ROTC for geeks. ;-)

The CERIAS program at Purdue University is one of the recipients of this NSF grant. Other recipients include: CMU, and the Naval Post Graduate School. But this isn't necessarily a slam dunk, you still have to be admitted to the program at the school you apply to.

A free education is nothing to sneeze at. Talk to a current grad student who is either teaching a class or picking up his prof's dry cleaning to pay the bills and they will tell you how they wish they could find a funding source like this.

The institutions that received this grant do cutting-edge research in security that will influence the field for years to come. Heck, I'd do it just to go and study w/Spaf.

Time travel is still entirely possible; you don't need a singularity for that. If nothing else, build a Tipler Cylinder. It just has to be really really dense (neutron star material will work) and spin really really fast (to be precise, such that the surface is moving over half the speed of light) and be really really long (technically infinite, but close to the middle of a finite cylinder should work; you'd need miles of the stuff to send a human back, but sending a gamma-ray communication laser could be a million times smaller).

I think there are a few things amiss with the pfir plan and I'd like to suggest and comment on some alternatives and have a few comments about our continues use of 20th century DNS.

Look back at the creation of ICANN and it's not difficult to see why it has failed. The timeline goes something like this: when the Wired article came out in 1994 where Joshua Quittner reported he registered mcdonalds.com and McDonalds didn't want it he ended up selling it to Burger King. At the time InterNIC registrations were taking about 3 days. This shot up to 11 weeks in a matter of days. The NSF, who funded NSI to run the InterNIC, did not feel it's role, which is to foster academic and scientific advancement, included subsidizing deodorant.com and the like, so, it asked the FNCAC to do something. What they did was instruct the NSF to tell NSI to begin charging for domains. This caught the Internet community rather off guard and discussion ensued on a "newdom" mailing list (whose archives can be found here). Several forces came into play. First was the rift between the group that felt they too could run a TLD and the group that though this should be run from a great big central registry. The latter became the IAHC/CORE thing while the former became the first alternative root. The US Government shut down the IAHC and began it's own proceedings: the white paper was produced. Other governments, most notably in the form of Paul Twoomey from Australia
and Chris Wilkinson from the EU balked at the plan and the revised plan, the green paper took out the language about creating 5 new TLDs immediately (thereby throwing each conflicted group at least one bone). At the time Mikki Barry and Kathy Kleinman suggested in Becky Burr's office that a set of global meetings take place, not to decide answers to tough problems, but to determine just where there was consensus on the various issues. This became the IFWP forum and 3 meetings were held in Reston Va., Geneva, and Singapore. There was to be a followup meeting to merge these consensus points into a framework for the new corporation that was to replace IANA. While this was happening, NSI and IANA were negotiating, and Ira Magaziner, Clinton's senior science advisor and Roger Cochetti, a VP of IBM were running around selecting a new board. The IFWP wrap up meeting never happened, it was scuttled by Mike Roberts (suspicion is high he had been told be would be president) and the vast amount of time and energy, money, hopes and aspirations that was IFWP went down the toilet - which is a real shame as it was a significant body of work. Three proposals went in to the US government to form the new corporation. The IANA/NSI proposal drafted by Joe Sims and NSI, the Boston Working Group proposal (which is where the wrap-up meeting was to have been) which was a sane version of the NSI/ICANN proposal, and the ORSC proposal which was the BWG plan with greater fiscal responsibility and an existing corporate shell. Citing popular public support for the IANA/NSI plan it was selected - but if you read the public comments on the NTIA site carefully you'll see far less support than implied and much of it was tentative, frankly. A board materialized out if thin air, selected because they didn't know anything about DNS. So what went wrong? Was the original ICANN plan flawed or were the people just the wrong choices? I suggest that if Karl Aurbach and 9 people like him has been the original board we would not now be even talking about DNS; the board appointed from in high did not represent the Internet community whatsoever and instead represented telco, government and trademark special interests. It is believed the concessions made so that foreign government supported the "green paper" was that they got to pick certain members of the board. The first big clue there was trouble was when the board missed it's deadline to define a process for their replacement and simply extended their jobs; they should have been gone over two years ago now.

So what have we learned from this? In my opinion, no group that says "we're in charge" really is; respect is earned, not asserted and I think this was the great failing of both IAHC and ICANN. So while I generally like Weinstein, Newman and Farber, I do distrust the IAB to some extent based on previous debacles like the Boston Tea party where they were thrown out for claiming OSI and not TCP/IP was the way to go. The ISOC is another non-starter, it's wanted to get it's hands on the DNS for over a decade and has been a great supporter of the authoritarian regimes of both IAHC and ICANN. The key, I believe, is not some group claiming they should be in charge or that they have all the answers - nobody does - but the good old fashioned and time proven method of Internet collaborative cooperation. And this means actually doing it, not paying lip service to it like ICANN did. Oh and cut out the 5 star hotels and first class Concorde flights.

Is this about Internet governance? No. Absolutely not. In it's most basic form this is nothing more than an institutionalized debate between Dave Crocker and Karl Denninger in 1986 taken to it's logical conclusion. But it's nothing to do with governance of the Internet. Face it, if all you do is read and write email and/or usenet news, and play on ISC or muck about on the web, you may never have heard of ICANN and it certainly has zero effect on you. This is just about new top level domains, period; the IP addresses have virtually all been handed over to the regional registries and the port allocations are handles by somebody than CAN add one to a number and write it down on a piece of paper.

But didn't ICANN break up NSI ? Nope. That was Ira Magaziners plan executed through the Department of Commerce. You don't really think NSI gave in because ICANN though it was a good idea do you? What has ICANN really done in 4 years? They've knuckled under to WIPO and given us the horribly flawed UDRP and 7 really stupid TLDs that despite $2.$M worth of scrutiny still had huge problems to the point of being dragged into court over it.

What alternative roots exist? Quite a few actually, and while on the face of it you might think this would be a problem, but face it, if you can pick up your mail and get to Yahoo! then they work, and any of them will let you do that. The differences in them are what new TLDs they publish in their root zones. I need to disclaim right away that I coordinate, with Brian Reid's help, the ORSC root, and it's generally believed to have the greatest penetration and is certainly the longest continuously operating one. The barrier to entry it low: show us working TLD servers and we'll list you. Other notable ones are the TINC root which is operated by some old time Usenet people such as Peter da Silva which has a policy of one tld per entity, which I don't like think can be made to work (the now defunct eDNS tried this and it was found to be too easily worked around), PacROOT which in my opinion swings too far the other way with their NameSlinger client - I don't think I know the proper number of TLDS any entity should operate but I do know it's not in the hundreds if not thousands; this raises anti-trust issues, and OpenNIC which is pretty good but only has a small number of new TLDs. There is also NameSpace which believes they should run all tlds. This grates against the notion of the root as a collection of independantly run TLDs in my opinion. But, it doesn't matter to me which one people use as long as they use one of them. Vote with your nameservers - it is in nobody's interest to break anything and using any of these roots will let you see all current DNS names and a whole universe of new ones although how many depends on which one you pick.

Why do we still use root servers? Now this is where it gets interesting. What if the US Government suddenly shut off the legacy root servers? 90% of the net would feel some sort of perturbation immediately especially since at least one TLD (.SE) is name-served directly from the root (not TLD!) servers as are many in-addr.arpa delegations. As the TTLs to TLD servers expired, users of the legacy root would not be able to resolve any DNS names. But, people that use other root servers would be immune to the demise of the legacy roots (modulo one of Swedens 7 .SE nameservers of course) but an even better tactic in my opinion is to primary the root zone for yourself. Then, any or all root servers could be shut off and you wouldn't notice a thing. This would leave you with one remaining problem and that is where could you get the root zone from. Your upstream might be a good place or as DJB has suggested, a cryptographically signed root zone could be posted to usenet periodically. This has the inherent advantage of being out of band of TCP/IP; that is, even a UUCP connection could inject the zone into the news stream. That's one answer to "how do you bootstrap DNS without DNS".

Do I think ORSC should be the next ICANN as the ICANNWATCH poll suggests? No and hell no! Nobody should be in charge, and given that the net and the DNS itself is edge controlled - that is, whoever has the root password to a nameserver determines what dns names exist and what don't - any model that asserts a central authority is doomed to fail. There is need for coordination, but not authority.

Vote with your nameserver; vote early and vote often.

Richard Sexton
March 19, 2002

Farther around Antarctica from there, several colonies of Adelie and Emperor penguins are endangered by breakups in the ice. The changes in ice have made it difficult for the adult penguins to get between their breeding grounds and areas where there are enough fish to feed them, and there's a substantial chance of a major population crash due to chick deaths.

So how do we get power down there ?

Yeah the stations on the high Antarctic plateau may not have too much power requirements but they use mainly diesel generators.

The Americans used a nuclear generator taken from a Sub years ago but they kept having problems with it and it's now been removed because the Antarctic Treaty forbids it.

In summer there's plenty of sun, so solar panels are used, but in winter there's none. In the center of Antarctica there's not too much wind (I studied at Dome C where most winds are 'born' and there's not enough to power a fan. On the other hand, on the coast you get demented winds that will break anything.

The French experimented with a heat transfer system that had it's highest efficiency in cold winds. The colder and faster the better. But it wasn't too conclusive.

And if you just want power for your palmtop, take L91 Lithium Energizer batteries, the only ones that work below -50C...

I think I have to disagree with this... The funding for the NSF rose quite a bit during the Clinton administration, and this is a trend which has been carried out so far during the Bush administration. For example, from 99 to 00 the funding grew at about 10%. See here for some numbers.

Some complain because there's been a lopsidedness in NSF grants in recent years, that essentially way too much money has been going towards biology instead of basic math and physics. But the government has been very kind to the research community under Clinton, and, hopefully, this will continue.

I don't know about the inside, but as someone who deals with the NSF from the outside applying for and getting grants, they understand that most academic scientists are using Linux/Unix etc. So they do give pointers for tools for linux to get things into the acceptable formats (TeX, dvi, Postscript, pdf) for submissions and so on. I mostly deal with fastlane their electronic grant submission/reviewing system and it now accepts things in lots of formats, as explained here There was a time a few years ago when they were requiring PDF and the Linux tools for genereating PDF were not mature- I ended up helping tons of people with getting things into the right shape for them by moving stuff over to a Mac, TeXing it there, including all fonts, using Acrobat (blegh) but that was the only reasonable option at the time.

I don't know about the inside, but as someone who deals with the NSF from the outside applying for and getting grants, they understand that most academic scientists are using Linux/Unix etc. So they do give pointers for tools for linux to get things into the acceptable formats (TeX, dvi, Postscript, pdf) for submissions and so on. I mostly deal with fastlane their electronic grant submission/reviewing system and it now accepts things in lots of formats, as explained here There was a time a few years ago when they were requiring PDF and the Linux tools for genereating PDF were not mature- I ended up helping tons of people with getting things into the right shape for them by moving stuff over to a Mac, TeXing it there, including all fonts, using Acrobat (blegh) but that was the only reasonable option at the time.

You raise some very good issues. I agree that in some special circumstances, the government may be, in effect, subsidizing its own research efforts by giving up patents and copyrights. Companies that see commercial potential in a research project will be motivated to compete, and this would generally have the effect of driving down costs.

Also, I by no means believe that all Federally funded research is "corporate welfare". Actually, under the right conditions, I think that funding research is one of the most important functions of government. Under the right conditions, research funding stimulates innovation, creates entire new sectors of the economy, and has the effect of breaking down monopolies that otherwise naturally arise in a capitalist system. By the "right condtions", I mean an economic climate that encourages small business start-ups, and a research policy that mandates the free exchange of ideas and scientific knowledge. Unfortunately, the trend in recent times is towards restricting information flow and encouraging corporate merger and consolidation. Both of these trends are inherently anti-competitive, and under these conditions government funding of research sometimes can be corrupted into a form of corporate welfare.

Finally, I want to address your statement below:

I would agree that the government funds a lot of research, especially in the form of grants to Universities in order advance technologies in certain areas, but this is only a small portion of the research that goes on in this country.

If we look at the broad category of total research and development, you are actually correct in that industry spends more than government:
(Weird Table Warning - Circumvention device for slashdot lameness filter protection. When numbers are lame, only lamers will have numbers)

(Note dollar amounts are not adjusted for inflation)
Year, x, Total R&D, x, Fed Gov, x, Industry.
x, ($1 x 10E9), x, (%), x, (%).
1960, x, 13.711, x, 65.02, x, 32.94.
1980, x, 83.332, x, 36.04, x, 37.13.
1999, x, 247.000, x, 26.66, x, 68.55.
(Additional funding sources are Universities, Non-profits, and Non-federal governments)
(Source: US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the U.S.:2000 (http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstra ct-us.html),
Section 20, Science and Technology (http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/statab/sec20. pdf) , pg 603)

It is interesting to note that the proportion of total R&D performed by industry has increased dramtically over the past 40 years. It is not that government funding for R&D has decreased (since 1980, at least, in terms of real dollars government funding for R&D has increased by 34%),
rather, that corporate R&D spending has increased even more rapidly than government funding.

However, if we look at funding for basic research (not including product development costs and applied research), we see that the federal government still outspends industry:
(Note dollar amounts are not adjusted for inflation)
Year, x, Total R&D, FedGov, Industry, Univ., Nonprofit, NonFed Gov
x, ($1 x 10E9), (%), x, (%), x, (%) x, (%), x, (%).
1993 x, 28.754, x, 57.1, x, 24.8 x, 7.9 x, 6.9, x, 3.3.
2000 x, 47.903, x, 48.7, x, 33.9 x, 7.7 x, 7.0, x, 2.8.
Proportionally, corporate funding of all basic research is increasing, but is still significantly less than federal funding.

Finally, it is interesting to look at which institutions are receiving the funding for basic research:
(Note dollar amounts are not adjusted for inflation)
Year, x, Total R&D, FedGov, Industry, Univ., Nonprofit.
x, ($1 x 10E9), (%), x, (%), x, (%), x, (%).
1993 x, 28.754, x, 9.12 x,24.1 x, 57.8 x, 9.1.
2000 x, 47.903, x, 7.36 x,33.6 x, 49.0 x, 10.1.
(Source for the previous table: National Science Foundation,
National Patterns of R&D Resources: 2000 Data Update table 2A
Universities (and to a lesser extent, government labs) have been steadily losing their share of the total. Not surprising, as corporations tend to fund research internally.

You raise some very good issues. I agree that in some special circumstances, the government may be, in effect, subsidizing its own research efforts by giving up patents and copyrights. Companies that see commercial potential in a research project will be motivated to compete, and this would generally have the effect of driving down costs.

Also, I by no means believe that all Federally funded research is "corporate welfare". Actually, under the right conditions, I think that funding research is one of the most important functions of government. Under the right conditions, research funding stimulates innovation, creates entire new sectors of the economy, and has the effect of breaking down monopolies that otherwise naturally arise in a capitalist system. By the "right condtions", I mean an economic climate that encourages small business start-ups, and a research policy that mandates the free exchange of ideas and scientific knowledge. Unfortunately, the trend in recent times is towards restricting information flow and encouraging corporate merger and consolidation. Both of these trends are inherently anti-competitive, and under these conditions government funding of research sometimes can be corrupted into a form of corporate welfare.

Finally, I want to address your statement below:

I would agree that the government funds a lot of research, especially in the form of grants to Universities in order advance technologies in certain areas, but this is only a small portion of the research that goes on in this country.

If we look at the broad category of total research and development, you are actually correct in that industry spends more than government:
(Weird Table Warning - Circumvention device for slashdot lameness filter protection. When numbers are lame, only lamers will have numbers)

(Note dollar amounts are not adjusted for inflation)
Year, x, Total R&D, x, Fed Gov, x, Industry.
x, ($1 x 10E9), x, (%), x, (%).
1960, x, 13.711, x, 65.02, x, 32.94.
1980, x, 83.332, x, 36.04, x, 37.13.
1999, x, 247.000, x, 26.66, x, 68.55.
(Additional funding sources are Universities, Non-profits, and Non-federal governments)
(Source: US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the U.S.:2000 (http://www.census.gov/prod/www/statistical-abstra ct-us.html),
Section 20, Science and Technology (http://www.census.gov/prod/2001pubs/statab/sec20. pdf) , pg 603)

It is interesting to note that the proportion of total R&D performed by industry has increased dramtically over the past 40 years. It is not that government funding for R&D has decreased (since 1980, at least, in terms of real dollars government funding for R&D has increased by 34%),
rather, that corporate R&D spending has increased even more rapidly than government funding.

However, if we look at funding for basic research (not including product development costs and applied research), we see that the federal government still outspends industry:
(Note dollar amounts are not adjusted for inflation)
Year, x, Total R&D, FedGov, Industry, Univ., Nonprofit, NonFed Gov
x, ($1 x 10E9), (%), x, (%), x, (%) x, (%), x, (%).
1993 x, 28.754, x, 57.1, x, 24.8 x, 7.9 x, 6.9, x, 3.3.
2000 x, 47.903, x, 48.7, x, 33.9 x, 7.7 x, 7.0, x, 2.8.
Proportionally, corporate funding of all basic research is increasing, but is still significantly less than federal funding.

Finally, it is interesting to look at which institutions are receiving the funding for basic research:
(Note dollar amounts are not adjusted for inflation)
Year, x, Total R&D, FedGov, Industry, Univ., Nonprofit.
x, ($1 x 10E9), (%), x, (%), x, (%), x, (%).
1993 x, 28.754, x, 9.12 x,24.1 x, 57.8 x, 9.1.
2000 x, 47.903, x, 7.36 x,33.6 x, 49.0 x, 10.1.
(Source for the previous table: National Science Foundation,
National Patterns of R&D Resources: 2000 Data Update table 2A
Universities (and to a lesser extent, government labs) have been steadily losing their share of the total. Not surprising, as corporations tend to fund research internally.

Frankly, they might be right, in the long term, more heat means more water evaporation from the oceans, which means more snow in places like antarctica and the arctic, where temperature could rise 30 degrees in the winter and not get above freezing. Increased snowfall leads to increased glaciation, i.e. ice age. The problem is, this may take a thousand years to happen, or only 100, we just dont know. In the meantime, all the other stuff will happen, rising sea levels, floods, increased hurricanes, etc.

The temperature of the earth and the surface climate have radically changed many times in the past, and without any any artificial greenhouse emmissions from humans.

Youre absolutely right, these things have happened in the past, through natural causes, but this doesnt mean that humanity, in its current form, would have survived and prospered in these times. The earth will go on if manhattan is underwater, but it will make it much harder to catch a cab.

The effect of the sun's radition, volcanos, etc have long had an effect on the earth.

Also correct, again, this doesnt mean that human induced warming is not occuring. Humans put out more CO2 each year than all the volcanoes on earth (~3 billion tons, net) If volcanoes have an effect, then humans will too.

There is some evidence for the earth's warming, but the evidence is far from clean and many observations (such as (corrected) satellite data and weather balloons) show no warming.

try here here here here here And as for your satellite data argument, I suggest you read Nature, v394, August 13 1998, p661-4 Stating that corrected satellite data actually shows .13 degF increase per decade, consistent with ground based obs.

WHen the New York Times famously said "Blame global warming for the blizzard"

Yes, the NY times did exagerate. It should have said "Blame Global Warming for the SEVERITY of the blizzard" The blizzard probably would have happened anyways, but the point is that GW makes weather events worse, because energy is pumped into the system.

But the use of hysteria and scaremongering to sell a political agenda is wrong IMO.

Is it scaremongering if its the truth?